Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

THE NEED FOR GROW BIOINTENSIVE®!
http://www.growbiointensive.org/grow_need.html

Globally, the health of farming is being threatened by severe challenges:

    * Because of population growth, pollution of water sources, and greater
use of water for industry, by 2050 each person on the Earth will have only
25% of the water that was available in 1950. Current agricultural practices
use 80% of the Earth’s available water.
    * There may be as little as 40 years of farmable soil remaining
globally. For every pound of food eaten, 6 to 24 pounds of soil are lost
due to water and wind erosion, as the result of agricultural practices,
    * 95% of the seed varieties ever grown in agriculture are now virtually
extinct. Much of this is due to the growing of relatively few crops, and
the frequent use of hybrid seeds for the crops that are grown. Seeds that
are no longer used soon lose their viability and are rarely available.
    * Global warming may cut agricultural production in half within as
little as 20 years. In February, 2004, the Observer in the United Kingdom
reported that climate change is a greater threat to the world than
terrorism.
    * With supplies of petroleum and natural gas running out, conventional
agriculture—heavily dependent on these resources—will become more
expensive, raising food prices accordingly. As natural gas to make
inexpensive nitrogen fertilizer is depleted, it may take significantly more
land to grow the same amount of food, when conventional agricultural
practices are used.
    * The number of farmers globally keeps decreasing. In the US, only 2/5
of 1% of the population now farm. Many people would like to farm but are
unable to afford the land and equipment current wisdom says is necessary
for a farm to be economically viable. Other farmers have been forced off
their land due to heavy competition from globalization and subsidized food.
As farmers go out of business, their skills—often passed down through
millennia—are also lost to the world. Once thriving communities that
served rural populations deteriorate and die as farmers leave.


GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-Farming can provide a solution to many
of these challenges. The method:

    * Requires 67% to 88% less water than conventional agriculture.
    * Properly used, is capable of building up soil while growing food.
    * Grows a wide variety of crops, using only open-pollinated seeds.
    * Requires no petroleum or natural gas products. It is based on human
energy and will still be productive when oil runs out.
    * Can produce high yields on small pieces of land with limited resource
use, making it accessible to almost everyone who would like to grow food.

Small-scale farming is as old as agriculture itself. One study of 15
countries, primarily in Asia and Africa, found that per-acre output on
small farms can be as much as four to five times higher than on large ones.
Russia, over the years, has often produced 30% to 50% of its food on
household plots representing as little as 3% to 5% of all Russian farmland.
The productivity of small-scale farms is also being widely recognized by
agricultural economists who call it the “inverse relationship between
farm size and productivity.”